Becca Price publishes on how scholars with Ph.D.s in biomedical fields identify as scientists

05/21/2018

IAS faculty member Becca Price, along with colleagues in the UW School of Medicine and the UW School of Nursing, published a paper, "Competing Discourses of Scientific Identity among Postdoctoral Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences," in CBE-Life Sciences Education about how scholars with Ph.D.s in biomedical fields identify as scientists. These scholars, known as postdoctoral fellows, are in temporary positions between receiving their Ph.D.s and finding a permanent career path. Traditionally, postdocs have sought appointments as college faculty members, but these opportunities are now harder to find then they used to be. That means that postdocs are at a transitional stage. Price and her colleagues found that some of the fellows want their primary focus to be on conducting experiments, that others want to focus on big picture questions that frame entire research programs, and that other fellows incorporate both goals.